Moon’s Tidal Moving

The Moon’s Tidal Moving

Their lair, conveniently, was underneath some river, some harbour or some wide deep lake from whence they would, at night, sally forth as such primal Dark Entities sallied forth, among humans, to find food for themselves and new hosts for those Dark Daughters who watched over, cared, for them, and there seemed little to distinguish them from humans as they lurked in the dark shadowed places of cities and towns, waiting.

Perhaps they did appear, to the observant, as somewhat pale of skin, as if no sunlight had ever touched its whiteness, just as – certainly – they were tall, if slim, by human standards with hair long blonde and flowing, and noses fine, narrow, as if cut skilfully from the whitest of white marble. As for their eyes, their azure brightness only changed when, replete after their feeding, the colour became the lightest of light purple until, their digestion of human essence complete, it resumed its former sea-like hue. But it was their hands which, perhaps, gave the one and only direct clue – until, that is, those hands latched onto their human prey so easily easily disabled with a touch, only one touch, to be dragged then still living down through water to that damp foetid and communal lair. For their hands were thin, bony, with fingers long for their type, of all an equal size, and with thumbs as long as those fingers.

No one ever heard them behind or near them, as no one ever heard them speak, and it was this – combined with their ability to blend, shapeshiftlingly, to whatever was around – that made them, on Earth, such successful hunters of humans among the dark shadows of that urban night which humans in their arrogance assumed they owned.

Thus did the dried wasted now useless corpses come to line the tunnels and chambers of their lairs, and thus did some chambers there contain humans, captive, unseeing, but strangely sighing while the strands of the strange living tissue that bound them, encased them and held them tight to the ceilings, let them live, just a little if enough, until some Dark Daughter, visiting, would choose one as some new in-dwelling host for the life, the acausal life, she carried captured in a crystal. There would be rewards, then, for those hunters: a joyous celebration celebrated as such primal Dark Entities celebrated, feasting on humans and copulating among themselves as they copulated among themselves until repletion calmed and slept them and kept them still until the Moon’s tidal moving woke them.

Eulalia knew all this, and it pleased her, as she knew they were breeding as they bred, there in their lairs. Now, it was time for Ffion, her fledgling to fledge – to have his reward – and so she walked soundlessly, as one of Baphomet’s Dark Daughters might, to where he that night, as others in her house, lay asleep in the arms of his lover.

A naked Idella smiled as Eulalia her beautiful youthful Mistress of Earth entered that large subtly-lit room of the high-ceiling to sit beside her on the bed while Ffion slept that sleep that often arises from sexual satiation. For Idella knew what Eulalia had planned, and the two women kissed the kiss of lovers until, awakened, Ffion fumbled on the small antique table by his side of the bed for his spectacles.

“Are you ready for your reward,” Eulalia asked him while she caressed the breasts of her lover.

“Well, yeah,” a rather surprised Ffion said, assuming many things.

“No, not that,” Eulalia said, intruding upon his fantasy. “There is a gift, a precious gift, which we – which Idella – can given you, if you are willing and ready.”

“It is the gift, ” Idella said, as she touched his forehead, “of a greatly extended life. Of a thousand years, two thousand, maybe more.”

“I know you do, now, and the reasons why,” replied Eulalia who – to his surprise and pleasure – kissed him, as a lover might, directly and for some moments on his lips, to then touch her tongue to his. “There, you see,” she said, smilingly turning toward Idella and uncovering Ffion’s erection, “he is ready for you, again.”

“Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker,” continued Idella, vocalising again what a still silent Ffion then thought.

“Thus is he deemed ready,” Eulalia said. Then, to Ffion, “And so, as the darkness of this night seeps away as red-fingered Dawn spreads her luteous light, shall you became as one of us, bound during your causal life here on Earth, to dream where we dwell and dwell where we have dreamt; to live long, healthy, strong, and to prosper as you will.”

She kissed him again then – but as sister might kiss a brother – to leave him to the ministrations of that Earth-dwelling human-bodied Dark Daughter who voraciously leapt upon him as he lay, supine in her bed, to become for him in those moments of that forceful sexual joining everything he had ever dreamt or desired. He surrended, then, willingly, as she – her acausal inner essence, her dark formless un-human being – seeped into his body, his blood, the organ that was his brain, re-ordering him as he in his ecstasy physically spasmed beneath her to leave his body relaxed as their grew then within that human body of his a changing, a slightly changed, physiology and a new small organ whose tendrils, only half of which were causal, grew slowly, imperceptibly, out from their almost imperceptible home beneath his cerebellum.

^^^

It was less a than a week since Patterson and Cheddon had stood on that cobbled street in York to watch Eulalia’s carefully choreographed drama unfold, but it seemed as if that day, those memories of it, belonged to some distant unsettling past that neither of them should desire to dwell upon. And yet their very human desire to not forget – as their knowing of the immediacy and importance of Earthly-causal Time – made them dwell, almost to the point of obsession, upon that day, especially as, at night, no sleep came to either of them, accept in those fleeting if seemingly long times of those dreams, those strange dreams, never spoken about, where a naked Eulalia came unto them as they lay in their bed to kiss them to arouse them to suck their life, their very human essence, away, to leave them not only as a corpse paler and gaunter than they would have been even if all the blood and plasma within had been somehow drained away, but as a corpse that was somehow still mysteriously half-alive.

Thus did they – tired, almost exhausted – sit, with Beldan, in the airless, windowless inner room of a government department in Whitehall, waiting again for that senior Civil Servant who had been with them, every day, since those carefully choreographed events. And when he did arrive sporting his colourful silk tie-of-the-day and the regulation dark suit – it was pure force of strong will that roused Patterson from his almost stupor.

“We have one possibly significant line of enquiry,” Patterson said to him, without preamble.

“Oh yes?”

“Yes. Cheddon here, as you know, has been liaising with GCHQ and has been analyzing some anomalies.”

“Well, we could all do with some good news, especially after yesterday’s explosion and our inability to find let alone track this Eulalia character. Or whatever she calls herself.”

Inwardly, Patterson smiled, for the “your Unit” and “your inability…” of previous days, had become, in the past two days, “our Unit”, our team, and “our inability…”

“It appears,” Cheddon said, “that some very unusual transmissions have been detected. Unusual because of the frequency used, because of their content, their power, and, maybe most interesting of all, because they’re being beamed into a fixed point in Space, beyond Earth.”

“And,” Patterson added, “we’re working here on the assumption that these transmissions may be connected to recent events.”

“Why?” the senior Civil Servant asked.

“Basically,” Cheddon replied, “because they’re unexplained and at the moment inexplicable and because they do support our working assumption about those recent events.”

“And so do I,” added Patterson. “Given the nature of the events in York, it seems a reasonable working assumption.”

“You have obtained a fix on the origin of these transmissions?” the senior Civil Servant asked.

“Not yet. But, ” replied Cheddon, “I’ve narrowed it down to a smallish area by the Thames, here in London. We’ve used what tracking facilities are available – ground-based and satellite – and the messages don’t appear to be directed at anything we can detect. Perhaps the Americans might help out, here?”

“Not possible, currently,” the senior Civil Servant replied. “Orders from the PM. Keep this among ourselves. That sort of thing.”

“Anyway,” Patterson said, “even if those Septic Tanks agreed they wouldn’t on past form share all their info.”

The senior Civil Servant pretended not to hear the remark. “Your plan? Should you track down the source?”

“Surround. Contain. Detain.”

“Unless,” quipped the young Cheddon, “they get beamed-up to the mother-ship!”

“Quite why the corpse of that individual,” Beldan continued, “just disintegrated into dust, less than an hour following death, is a medical mystery, for the moment. Nothing like it has been reported with any of the other corpses so far recovered.”

“No. That makes four days, this week, with no new corpses, found. Although – ” he began, then paused.

“Yes?” Beldan enquired.

“Although there has been a quite substantial increase in the number of missing persons reported.”

“Maybe, ” said Cheddon, “they are being taken alive for some sinister alien purpose.”

None of them saw Beldan briefly smile, for both Cheddon and Patterson were momentarily reclaimed by such a wistful remembering of their dream wherein a naked Eulalia came upon them as they lay in their bed to kiss them to arouse them to suck their life, their very human essence, away within her, while the senior Civil Servant stood to thoughtfully, professionally, consider what he would say in his morning meeting with his nation’s worried Prime Minister.

Thus it was that the trio departed from that windowless room of the low ceiling to a waiting car which, escorted by armed guards, conveyed them back to their sanctuary in the basements of some large city building where they each returned to their tasks as red-fingered Dawn spread her luteous light over that city whose humans walked, slept, sat, lay, awoke, or travelled, unaware of what the coming night would bring.

^^^

With the setting of that Sun which had warmed the air and the people that cloudless Autumn day in the south of England, there arose a great stirring among the denizens of those foetid underwater lairs where had rested those hunters of humans.

Thus, attuned to the Dark Daughters who watched over, cared, for them, they sallied forth not alone as hitherto but in feral packs always keeping to the shadows which they enhanced or caused by disabling or destroying those lights which lit the streets and roads of those cities and towns and places especially chosen by Eulalia that night. And thus it was there in those chosen places as if some dark but purifying contagion had begun to spreadingly seep forth from riverside, harbour or lake as whole areas become subsumed by a silent shadow bringing such fear trembling and dread to humans and wherein humans stupefied into silence were garnished, plucked from their lives, and where – having served their purpose of food – they were discarded dead to leave only corpses, only dried corpses, paler and gaunter than they would have been even if all the blood and plasma within them had been somehow sucked away.

Eulalia was there, high above one such shadowing darkness: watching from where a large Penthouse balcony gave both fine Thames river and city of London views. Venora – she of the red-hair and the fullsome body – was there, with Idella, and Ffion the newly-blooded whose hands and arms – whose still changing body – still ached from the effort his first three human-feedings had caused him. Thus did they, with others of their non-human and half-human kind, so gladfully, gleefully, watch as that uneven patch of dark spread silently un-humanly forth from below them.

And when after long hours of terror it was over, the dark contagion slowly silently ebbed to flow back unobserved to be back under water where replete from their feeding a calmness came to calm, soothe, reward, protect and sleep them until those Dark Daughters might certainly would need them, again, to cleanse some other small places on Earth. Then only then – when sleep became them – in areas claimed, sanctioned, purified in presencing darkness, were sound and speech restored to humans who there remained alive: there where corpses lay scattered singly or had been haphazardly heaped into piles.

There was nothing no one – no human, no authority – could do, except collect the corpses, restore the lights, and try to ease if only in some small way the shock, the terror, and the awe. Soon, the Media – television, radio programmes, newspapers – would be awash and bleating with reports, as almost as soon the government of that land, and its minions, would be spinning yarns of its own: “According to a statement just issued by the Prime Minister, there is no need to panic as the government has the situation under control. At a special news conference, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice announced that seventeen people – suspected terrorists – had been arrested for their part in this nationwide terrorist outrage where a deadly virus, released in some thirteen cities and towns across England, is reported to have caused many thousands of fatalities…”

But slowly, creepingly slowly, stealthily, from one human being to another, another more terrifying story would be told, as Eulalia the Dark Sorceress had intended, as – not that many miles from her temporary luxurious riverside lair – a senior Civil Servant stood with his trio of new friends in that windowless room of the low ceiling.

“According to information we have just received from MI6,” he said to Patterson, “there have now been a few reported cases of similar corpses found in the United States, and a few in other countries, such as Egypt.”

“On the scale we’ve seen tonight?” Beldan asked.

“No, not at all. Thankfully not. Our information indicates around only two dozen or so, at most, in the United States.”

“Everything is ready,” Patterson said.

“You have the location?” the senior Civil Servant asked him.

“By the time we arrive the area will be secured. We have the authority to proceed?”

“Yes. But only on the understanding that it is a last resort. We want them alive.”

“That may not be possible. Casualties will be kept to a minimum,” Patterson lied. Ponti’s – People Of No Tactical Importance – were expendable, and if he had to take out the whole Apartment building, he would.

^^^

It all went according to Patterson’s careful, meticulate military plan, so that by the time he and his Unit – with the senior Civil Servant in tow – arrived, the new, fashionable, medium-rise, riverside Apartment building had been swiftly and stealthily surrounded. Overhead, but not too close, RAF fighter jets circled, missiles armed, target acquired, while – nearby – heavy re-enforcements waited as, in distant radar and satellite centres, operators intently listened and watched, ready for any transmission, received or sent, and primed to relay just one word were any such thing detected. One word, to Patterson who without hesitation would order his pre-emptive strike.

Thus did those Special Forces troops silently enter the building. But there were no women, armed or otherwise, who appeared, anywhere, to oppose them as those well-trained troops skilfully threaded their way upwards from floor to floor. Indeed, they encountered nothing suspicious or deadly at all and by the time Patterson and his trio had joined them they had secured all but the uppermost floor, a suite of rooms for just the one prestigious Apartment, furnished in the minimalist manner.

It was not bravado that led Patterson, Sig Sauer pistol in his hand, to be first through the stairwell door, as it was not any sense of the heroic that made him be the first to try, and to open, that Apartment door. Rather, it was a strange mixture of both a soldier’s duty and a man’s desire. But his inner dichotomy was never put to the test, for the place – the whole place – was silent, still, and empty. Only a vague, subtle if somewhat intoxicating exotic scent remained, and he was standing by the large glass doors that gave access to the balcony overlooking the river Thames – while troopers unnecessarily and loudly secured the other rooms – when he remembered where he had smelt, felt, that scent before. It was Eulalia, who naked came upon him in his nightful fitful dreams where he lay in his bed and she kissed him to arouse him to suck his life, his very human essence, away, to leave him not only as a corpse paler and gaunter than he would have been even if all the blood and plasma within had been somehow drained away, but as a corpse that was somehow still mysteriously and longingly half-alive. And he was standing there, immersed in his amalgam of feelings, when Eulalia’s message began to play on the large modern television screen attached to one wall.

“Hello again you sexy boy! You are getting closer – but not quite close enough, just yet,” and the beautiful Eulalia mockingly but enchantingly smiled. “As a helpful human colleague of ours once so perceptively wrote, and do excuse my few liberties with the text. My version is so much better, wouldn’t you agree? Anyway, as you are standing comfortably then I will begin:

It is of fundamental importance – to your human evolution – that what is Dark, and Sinister, is made real in a practical way, over and over again. That is, that what is dangerous, awesome, numinous, tragic, deadly, terrible, terrifying and beyond the power of ordinary mortals, laws and especially governments to control is made manifest. In effect, humans need constantly reminding that such things still exist; they need constantly to be brought “face-to-face”, and touched, with what is, or appears to be, inexplicable, uncontrollable, powerful and “evil”. They need reminding of their own mortality – of the unforeseen, inexplicable “powers of Fate”, of the powerful forces of both “Nature” and of Darkness. If this means killing, wars, suffering, sacrifice, terror, disease. tragedy and disruption, then such things must be…

“Do you begin to comprehend, now, what this beginning of ours is partly about? I do so hope so. Your planet is also in need of a little – how shall I say? – house-cleaning. But enough of all this sober governmental-type guff. You’ve have long hard day, haven’t you, sweetie? So relax. Enjoy. Have a party. I do so wish I could stay, and personally entertain you, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me. Pressing matters to attend to. I know, how awfully boring. But I will make it up to you, promise. And it will be worth the wait, as I’m sure you are by now beginning to know. Anyway, sweetie, bye-bye for now!” And she blew him a kiss, and then waved at everyone before her image was replaced by scenes of woman remarkably similar to her making passionate love to man remarkably similar to him, accompanied by music: a waltz by Johann Strauss, The Younger.

Calmly, Patterson fired three rounds from his pistol at the screen, thereby destroying it. But he could not quite escape the feeling that Eulalia, from somewhere and somehow, was watching him, and benignly smiling.